


Camera Obscura

by Taselby



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, Gen, evil ducks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 18:39:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16068980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taselby/pseuds/Taselby
Summary: “Why do you have an extra shadow?”Crowley went very still for a span of twenty or thirty heartbeats, steadfastly resisting the urge to check his sunglasses again. “I don’t haveanyshadow right now,” he said finally, nodding at the shade.The boy gave a quick shake of his head and pushed the hair back out of his eyes. Fear and a burning curiosity rolled off of him. “Not like that—everybody has one like that. I mean the one you keep in your skin.”





	Camera Obscura

Aziraphale was late. Crowley had paced this wedge of the park, up and down the path, and crossed the footbridge over and back enough times to make the dark-coats-and-sunglasses types there look around nervously and walk off in different directions, presumably to meet at a second, uncompromised, rendezvous point. Of course he also had a dark coat and sunglasses, but that was different. Besides, he’d already shed the coat, draping it over the back of the shady bench he’d claimed near their favorite spot.

The afternoon was warm, not quite a heat wave, but enough that there was a general feeling of sticky discontent hanging in the air. He checked his watch again, and folded away the half-bag of bread he’d brought for the ducks. It wasn’t nearly as much fun sinking them without Aziraphale there to protest. He sat back on the bench, crossed his legs, and picked a bit of tree fluff off of his trousers.

He was bored. He broke every second air conditioner from Madam Tussaud’s to the London Eye, and, just for laughs, delayed the arrival of the repair workers by a combined average of nine hours. 

The ducks, oblivious to the frustration rising with the mercury, fussed lazily in the shade, preening and settling down for a nap. Or they were, until the same group of children tore past for a second time, playing some game that seemed to involve little more than running and screaming. Crowley winced as a girl tore past with a cry that would have done a kettle proud.

Some few of the ducks quacked in protest, shook themselves, and waddled off toward the lake.

A boy lagged behind his friends and stopped, chest heaving, watching the ducks making their sleepy getaway as he gulped for air. At least, Crowley assumed it was a boy, as it was in that androgynous phase somewhere between “infant” and “teenager.” It was difficult to tell these days. For the sake of convenience, he decided that the child was male.

And he was staring at Crowley, his sweaty, dirt-smeared face soft with wonder and curiosity. Or possibly just oxygen deprivation. He held child’s gaze for just a beat too long, and it had been misinterpreted as an invitation of some sort. The boy’s shoes scuffed through the dust, kicking up leaf litter and small bits of bark as he walked up, stopping a good arm’s length away. Smart. A breeze stirred the heavy air and the smell of the lake rolled over them. 

Crowley turned his gaze back to the ducks as they glared balefully at no one in particular and slipped into the water with quiet splashes. He rolled up his sleeves, silently blessed at Aziraphale’s lack of a mobile phone and somewhat casual ideas about time, and promised himself that first thing tomorrow, he was buying the angel a phone. And teaching him how to use it. All of this took up a good two minutes, which should have been an overwhelming test of any child’s attention span. For good measure, he counted out another minute or so. 

Around the park just then there were four acts of petty larceny, three arguments, two cases of food poisoning (results to follow), and one broken engagement. The beauty of it was, he didn’t have to actually do anything except enjoy it. The humans did it all themselves. 

When he looked back up from his sleeve, the boy was still there. Crowley briefly considered simply getting up and walking away, but he was feeling good, or at least less bored, and there was a kind of defeat in being chased off his bench by a sweaty child with no manners. He picked a speck off of his coat. Aziraphale would have known what to do with him. Or, knowing Aziraphale, maybe not. “Your friends have gone,” he said, and realized that it possibly sounded more sinister than he’d really intended, but no matter. Idly, he wondered how long he’d keep standing there like that if his shoes were suddenly filled with beetles.

“They’ll be back.” The boy considered for a moment, pushing damp hair back from his face, smearing more dirt artlessly across his forehead. “You look funny.” 

Crowley pushed his sunglasses up and arched an eyebrow at the boy. “So does your hair, but you don’t see me pointing that out, do you?”

“Why do you have an extra shadow?”

Crowley went very still for a span of twenty or thirty heartbeats, steadfastly resisting the urge to check his sunglasses again. “I don’t have _any_ shadow right now,” he said finally, nodding at the shade. 

The boy gave a quick shake of his head and pushed the hair back out of his eyes. Fear and a burning curiosity rolled off of him. “Not like that—everybody has one like that. I mean the one you keep in your skin.” Crowley was getting an odd feeling about this; surely he’d filled his _creepy child_ quota for… forever.

“Are you the Devil?”

His heart thudded away inside his chest; he reminded it firmly that it didn’t actually need to do that. 

There was a bit of a pause as he considered and rejected several answers before saying, “No.” There. That was easy; perhaps Aziraphale was right, and honesty was sometimes best. He’d never tell the angel that, of course. Reflexively, he made to check his watch again, but wasn’t really focusing on the dial. 

Children in general were odd, and best avoided. They didn’t have the years of rationalizations and denials weighing them down that adults did, and so were quicker to believe in the odd things they saw. Since Crowley was, by most measures, an oddity, they sometimes saw him for what he was. Not every child, and not often, but still. The Device girl wasn’t the only psychic kicking about. He recrossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap.

A sense of self-preservation, or even sense in general didn’t seem to standard issue these days. The boy sat on the bench beside him. Denying the allegation of being the Great Evil was apparently enough to be considered safe. Or safe enough. The boy’s legs weren’t quite long enough to reach the ground, and he swung his feet back and forth, toes scraping in the dirt. “So what are you? You’re… strange. You look like a person, but…”

“You might want to rethink the wisdom of sitting next to someone and then telling them that they’re not really a person. What if I _am_ the Devil? Do you think I’d admit it?”

The boy had the decency to look embarrassed for all of a second. Then he took a breath and soldiered on. “If you were the Devil, you’d have stolen me to Hell by now.”

Crowley almost laughed. “What makes you think we’d want you? You’re a little scrawny for eternal damnation. Wouldn’t last a week.”

The boy struggled with this for a long moment, the thoughts chasing themselves across his face. Unless something changed, this one would belong to Aziraphale’s people. Not an ounce of dissembling in him; he wore it all right there on his grubby sleeve. A fine line formed between his brows. “So…”

Fine. If the kid wanted honesty, Crowley was happy to see how much he could take. He lowered his sunglasses and fixed the boy with a hard yellow gaze. “I’m a demon.” There. “ _Not_ the Devil.”

There was a small, mean sense of satisfaction as the boy flinched, just a bit. Fear shimmered off the boy like heat from a summer road; he bit his lip. “What’s the difference?”

A complete lack of standards and a few thousand years of bureaucratic ass-kissing. He pushed his sunglasses up and pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing at the corners of eyes. “It just is,” he said instead, not really wanting to dig in to Hell’s bureaucracy and opportunities for downward mobility. There was still the option of filling the kid’s shoes with beetles. He’d hold that in reserve for now, a sort of Plan C. “For instance, I don’t usually eat small children, but I might consider making an exception.” Plan… much further down the list, if only because Aziraphale wouldn’t speak to him for a century.

The boy wiped his nose on his arm and appeared to consider this new information. Crowley mentally mapped the location of every nicely child-free bar in the area and pushed himself up off the bench. In a robust display of inner strength, he walked out onto the bridge, and not toward any of the bars nearby which were probably pouring glasses of brandy at that very moment. _Leave the bottle, please._

And Aziraphale would be along any moment now. He hoped.

At this point the last of the ducks their would-be napping place, and followed him along the bridge, paddling along and quacking for a handout. Freeloaders. He pulled out the now very squished bag of bread and tore off small pieces, tossing them absently down into the water. Free of the shade, the sun felt good on his face; he tipped his head back and basked in it.

A furtive glance over his shoulder revealed only the one shadow, thanks. Not that he was nervous. He breathed slowly; the smell of wet, green things was very strong here, and insects hummed in the cooler shallows along the shore.

The boy—Crowley briefly regretted not asking his name, but that moment had already passed, and really, it would have made this into something more serious than he wanted it to be; it would have made the boy into a _person_ and not just a random annoyance. And yes he recognized the hypocrisy in that, thank you. The boy trailed behind Crowley into the sunny spot along the bridge railing. The fear in him wasn’t gone, but it was faded, and the curiosity was still powerful. A combination like that could be stoked into all sorts of things when he was older. Aziraphale’s people might be denied this one after all.

The boy shoved the hair out of his eyes again, and looked back down the path where his friends had gone. They’d been gone for a while now, but it probably felt longer that it actually was. “My Gran says demons are bad,” he said slowly. “If you're bad, why do you feed the ducks?"

"Your Gran sounds like a smart woman." He passed the last of the bread to the kid, and leaned against the railing with both palms, watching the ducks fighting over the crumbs. In for a penny, as the saying went. "The ducks are greedy and cruel in their own ways, but they never had a choice about it.” He rubbed his fingertips against the underside of the rail. The metal was warm and gritty. “They were made that way."

The boy thought about this for a long moment, crumpling the edge of the bag in his small fingers. "Could the ducks be better if they tried? If they wanted to?”

Crowley took another long breath. It was soothing, even if he didn’t really need it. Like tea, or wine. There was dust on his shoes, and tree fluff on his sunglasses. Duckweed floated in great clumps along the margins of the lake, and everything smelled heavy and ripe. With every minute the sun slipped lower in the sky and the shadows stretched out behind them. Toward them. ”They don't know that they're being bad. There's no one to tell them."

The boy watched the ducks paddling along beneath them, still hoping for more bread. “It doesn’t seem bad to want things. My brother wants cake _all_ the time, but he’s not really bad, just little.” It was difficult to watch him struggle, gathering his words. If he tried any harder, Crowley thought that smoke might come out of his ears. “Maybe they’re just little like that. You could tell them how to be bigger."

Crowley smiled, small and tight. He took off his sunglasses and dusted the lenses on his sleeve, carefully not looking at the boy. The sound of the paper bag crinkling filled the quiet. "But I'm bad, too; your Gran said so. Maybe you should tell them, since you seem to know. They'll listen to you as well as anyone, I think.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. He glanced up at Crowley and then back down at the ducks, who were starting to disperse now that the bread was gone. “Maybe you’re like the ducks.”

Crowley turned, ready to fill his shoes with worse than beetles. 

The boy went a bit pale, and his right heel scuffed back against the pavement, but to his credit he didn’t run. His hands on the bag were perhaps a bit shaky, and it was more of a stutter than a shrug as one shoulder twitched up. “Maybe you just want things.” 

The things demons _wanted_ would make a strong man pale. Crowley never forgot what he was.

Down the path, a child’s shriek rang through the trees, bright and joyous as a teakettle, and the boy looked away toward the green. And like that, the weight of the moment was gone.

The boy twitched a smile at him, careful and still more than a little afraid underneath his bravado as he ran off to join his friends.

Gravel crunched behind him and he glanced up to see Aziraphale striding up the walk, pink-faced in the heat, an apology no doubt already forming on his lips. Crowley met him at the bench, prepared to see if the angel’s apology might take the form of a dark table and good brandy.

“Who on Earth was that?” Aziraphale asked. He picked up Crowley’s coat and shook the tree fluff off of it. He perched on the edge of the seat and laid both of their coats over his lap. Even in the shade his eyes were the clear blue of a cloudless sky.

Crowley shook his head. “Nobody. Just a boy who thought he’d found something.”

Aziraphale looked at him, too sharp. “And did he?”

“I’ve no idea,” Crowley said. Not giving Aziraphale time to catch his breath, he took their coats and folded them over his arm. “Come on, angel. There’s a new Caribbean restaurant I want to try.” He took Aziraphale by the elbow and steered them off the path and across the lawn to where the Bentley was parked. 

“I’m not eating pig ears again,” Aziraphale fussed, but didn’t slow his stride.

“Just think of all the silk purses we could make,” Crowley smiled, entirely amused, and slid his sunglasses on. Aziraphale gave him a flat look, and Crowley rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine.” 

“Polish?”

“No,” he said firmly. “Cabbage.” 

“Oh, yes. Excellent point, my dear.”

The middle ages had been quite enough. If he never ate cabbage or turnips again, well. “How about Colombian?”

From the corner of his vision, he saw Aziraphale’s smile not so much in his face as in a whole brightening of his posture. “Oh, yes. I know just the place. They have an Argentinian Cabernet Franc that’s quite good, for New World grapes.”

The brandy would wait.

*~*~*~*~*~*

End

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the lovely sprocket for beta-reading. All mistakes are my own.


End file.
